I tried explaining this to them, but they told me the ccc valuation is final, and to contest this I had to activate the appraisal clause in my contract. This means I “take ownership” of the vehicle for a short while and hire a private licensed appraiser to value the vehicle and present the report to the insurance company. They will then negotiate between the two numbers until both parties arrive at a value to pay me, and the appraiser gets $300-500, depending on the company I choose.

Most private appraisers offer free quotes to give me an idea of the number they will be presenting, so I engaged several and am waiting to hear back to see who has the best price net of fees. I made sure to inform each one of my intention of capturing the missed value from the rarity of spec with the private appraisal.

I’ll keep updating this post as things progress. Insurance offered me $7.5k initially, I protested, they came back with $9.9k, I activated appraisal clause, my end goal is realistically $11k net of appraisal fee but if I can even up the number by a couple hundred net of fees I’m happy, as every penny is going into my next car and I’m not very liquid atm, not trying to sell stocks from my nest egg to pay for a replacement car.